


Zero Crisis

by Roadcrew



Category: Original Work, ゼロの使い魔 | Zero no Tsukaima | The Familiar of Zero
Genre: Crossover, Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2604743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadcrew/pseuds/Roadcrew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louise gets a supervillain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zero Crisis

"Boring, boring, boring," Gremlin said, and she idly twisted a finger through her short blonde hair. Another explosion shook the Academy's central tower. The woman wobbled on her chair. She'd taken it to balancing on its two back legs with just a toe of one of her golem-legs against the table to support herself, like some weird game.

"You have to do _something_!" Louise said. Her hands were clenched, knuckles tight. The whole mass of the students and staff had taken refuge in the central tower, barracading and reinforcing the walls with Earth magic. The teachers had tried a few potshots, but the incredibly efficient guns of the attackers had rendered that a clearly suicidal tactic as soon as a burst of shots had put a hole through Professor Colbert's shoulder and taken off one of his ears.

"They're just punks," Gremlin said. "Not even real soldiers. They've got some shitty knockoff Type 92s and a bunch of AKs." Another explosion shook the tower. "Don't ask me how the hell they got any of that here, but it's all *crap*." She turned a page in the book she'd borrowed from Tabitha. Louise kept her eyes away from how the woman's hand—the whole end of that artificial arm—had split in two to hold the book and turn its pages at the same time.

Louise let out a shriek of frustration. "They're going to _kill us_ " she said. They were hardly the only group with someone panicking, though Tabitha had stayed unnervingly calm—and had stayed watching Gremlin the whole time.

"If they were going to kill us they'd have blown out the entrances and rushed us," Gremlin said, and she turned another page. "They're trying to be scary as fuck to you backwards primitives—no offense," she said in Tabitha's direction. "I think they're cross-time too. If they were locals, they'd know what they were doing. They're staying out there because they don't have any idea what you-all can do."

"None taken," said Tabitha, after a moment of thought.

From outside there was a great trembling thud, and then another, and then a burst of gunfire… not aimed at the tower, this time. Gremlin let the chair forward onto all four legs and sat up straight, smoothing the hem of her simple open-backed dress down. "What was that?"

"It's a golem!" someone called a blonde-haired boy from the other end of the hall, one who'd been brave enough to peek through the arrow-slit viewport left in the thick stone rolled up over the windows. "It's huge! It… that has to be the Shattered—urk!" He collapsed as a stray bullet pinged through the viewport and caught him in the chest.

"Guiche!" shrieked a girl in the first-years' brown cloak, and a few of the students dragged him away from it, staying close to the floor.

"The Shattered Urk? That doesn't sound very impressive," Gremlin said, but she put the book down. Her left arm reassembled itself into a semblance of the normal human shape. Louise winced as she watched, seeing the ripples of movement in the gold-metal components up to where the arm attached to her, and the back-mounted frame she was wearing under the dress, at the shoulder.

"Shattered Earth," Tabitha said. She picked up the book but watched Gremlin over it. "Noted criminal. Performs impossible robberies in broad daylight."

"Huh," Gremlin said. A bright spark popped out of the mechanical frame covering her back and, on a tiny plume of fire, shot out the slit in the stone covering one of the windows. She stared at something that didn't exist. "Uses giant golems pulled up out of nowhere?" she said, and there were a few thuds, more gunfire, and another explosion—though this one was outside, not against the tower.

"Yes," Tabitha said.

Gremlin grinned. It was a vicious sort of grin, and the components of her golem-legs and -arms rippled up and down their lengths. "This is better," she said, and then, louder, "Open it!" She pointed at Professor Chevreuse and then gestured at one of the covered-over windows.

Chevreuse coughed an objection. "But I can't risk—"

"Too slow!" Gremlin said, and another spark shot out from the frame on her, the backwash of it fluttering her dress, and blew the wall out from the inside. She laughed—it was a mad hyena's laugh—and ran, launching herself out onto the arm of the huge golem in the courtyard. Louise gaped, and then scrambled away from the newly-made hole in the wall before any more stray gunfire could come through in her direction.


End file.
